Sandeep Ahuja

Ahuja was a National Merit Scholar and studied at Aligarh Muslim University, where he received the Abdul Aziz Medal and the University Medal. He later took a Master of Public Policy at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago and a graduate certificate in health administration and policy at the university's Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy and Practice, holding a Harris Fellowship and being named a McCormick Tribune Community Leadership Fellow.

Ahuja joined the Indian Revenue Service in the 1991 batch and wrote a book on India's drawback tax rebate programme before leaving government service.

He co-founded Operation ASHA in 2006. The organisation's model places treatment centres in shops, temples and other everyday locations close to where patients live, in order to shorten the distance patients must travel and to reduce the stigma attached to attending a tuberculosis clinic, and uses community health workers to supervise treatment. Its reported cost of about 80 US dollars per patient treated is substantially below the average for comparable organisations.

In 2010 Operation ASHA worked with Microsoft Research to develop eCompliance, a biometric terminal that records each supervised dose a patient takes and alerts a health worker when a patient misses one. The organisation has operated across states in India including Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, and in Cambodia, where it has worked in fourteen operational districts.

Ahuja has taught as a guest lecturer at the University of Chicago and has spoken on tuberculosis control at universities internationally.

Ahuja received a Public Service Award from the University of Chicago in 2013 for his work with disadvantaged tuberculosis patients. He served on the board of the Stop TB Partnership from 2009 to 2012, representing non-governmental organisations of developing countries, and gave the keynote address at Aligarh Muslim University's Founder's Day celebrations in 2002.[2][3][4]